Afternoon Drabble
by theartistformerlyknownaswmlaw
Summary: Tonks shares a secret about her husband.


A/N: Harry Potter, names, places and all related indicia are the trademarks of Warner Brothers, JK Rowling, Scholastic, et. al. I own nothing but plot & $75,000 in loans.  
  
Afternoon Drabble  
  
You'd never know it to look at him. Fact of the matter was, very few people knew my husband's other big secret.  
  
You see, my husband is a closet football fanatic.  
  
I'd found it out quite by accident when helping Molly with the wash one afternoon. At the bottom of the pile was a very faded red, almost pink, t- shirt bearing a coat of arms and what appeared to be a cannon. Not recognizing it, I'd simply hung it up to dry and nearly forgotten about it. Then on the next wash day, I found a grayed and threadbare shirt emblazoned with Leeds United. And so it went. Every week, discovering another old, well-worn shirt. By the end of the summer, I must have hung out shirts from Liverpool, Newcastle, Chelsea, West Ham, Southampton and Manchester.  
  
My natural curiosity long before getting the better of me, I'd done a bit of investigating and discovered that the shirts represented Muggle football teams from across the country. My first thoughts had been that the shirts belonged to Hermione. Then again, the only t-shirts I had ever seen Hermione wear were bright orange and overly large for her petite frame. They surely weren't Bill's or Charlie's, of that I was quite confident, because the shirts showed up too often in the wash to belong to someone present at our Headquarters only sporadically. No, they had to belong to someone who was spending much, if not all, of their time at the house.  
  
I was able to scratch most of my suspects off the list by the time the school term had started. When the shirts continued to show up in the laundry, I was left with only two names. I finally asked Molly if the shirts belonged to her Muggle-loving husband, which was met with a laugh and a "I thought they were yours, dear!"  
  
Thus left with only one name on the list, I finally asked him over dinner one night, when it was just the two of us in the house. He'd shyly admitted that they were his, apologizing for their poor condition. Waving off their condition, I inquired into how he of all people had acquired a collection of shirts representing nearly all of the British football clubs.  
  
As it turned out, he'd never even heard of football until he'd arrived at Hogwarts. Never being much interested in Quidditch, Lily had been a huge fan who could talk for hours about the Gunners, her favorite club. So, while James and Sirius would spend hours discussing the latest Quidditch news, scores and plot strategy for the next week's match, Lily'd be going on about the Arsenal's prospects against the Wolverhampton Wanderers or the Tottenham Hotspur.  
  
Once they'd finished school, she dragged him to a few matches, though it was difficult to find time in between getting married, setting up a house, having a baby, and of course hiding from Voldemort. Not long after, she was gone and he was living hand to mouth, and football was the farthest thing from his mind. But then, one afternoon, when he had been able to scrape together a few extra pounds and found himself in a Muggle pub, he found himself not just watching the game on the telly but caught up in the raucous atmosphere, rooting alongside the townies. And it was as if she was there with him, at least in spirit. The hurt had been a little less, if only for a few hours. After that, no matter what town he was living in or how little money he had, he'd head down to the pub as often as possible to catch a match, support the local club and have a drink to his friends' memories.  
  
Things are more than a bit different now. Once Harry'd done what we all hoped and prayed he'd do and the War was over, the right sort had taken over the running of the Ministry and we were able to, as Ron put it, make it legal. We moved into a small cottage not far from Hogwarts, where Dumbledore had invited him to return as DADA professor. My dad gave us a telly as a wedding present with Arthur managing to get it to run without electricity, much to Molly's dismay.  
  
These days, rather than watching a match in a pub, surrounded by drunken strangers, he watches the games from the comfort of his own home, stretched out on his own couch, drinking his own beer, in the company of friends and family. Though still singing off-key with his fellow revelers, it sounds more like a lullaby for the wee one sleeping on his chest than the rowdy fight song that it was meant to be. 


End file.
